Jack Higgins: The wolf at the door

"Whoever was behind Barry didn't trust him to keep his mouth shut," Dillon said. "But how did they find out where he was so quickly?"

"I've seen the nurse's statement. When he was in great pain and waiting to be prepped, she heard him call somebody on his mobile, very worked up, very agitated. He said, 'It's me, you bastard. I'm in Mercy Hospital with a bullet in my knee, and you'd better do something about it or else.' She said she took the phone from him and put it on the bedside table."

"Don't tell me," Dillon said. "It's gone."

"So no way of tracing who his employer was. No point in showing the nurse any faces. The guy was in green scrubs, a face mask, skullcap, the works. Oh, the police will go through the motions, but I'd say that's it. You're still out of it, Major, which is the main thing. Stay in touch. And if you make any sense out of the prayer card thing, let me know."

Dillon switched off his phone. Got up, went to the kitchen, found a half bottle of Krug champagne in the icebox, thumbed off the cork, took two glasses, and returned to his seat. He filled one glass and handed it to Miller, then filled the other.

"Are we celebrating something?" Miller asked.

"Not exactly, It's just that champagne always concentrates my mind wonderfully. Drink up, and we'll decide who's going to call Roper."

Roper listened with considerable calm, under the circumstances. But, then, as the man constantly at the center of the storm at the Holland Park safe house communications center, he had long since stopped being surprised at anything.

"So one prayer card is certainly interesting, and two, more than a coincidence."

"Exactly," Dillon said. "And three would be enemy action."

"George Langley's doing the postmortem now on Pool, so Ferguson's still at Rosedene. I'll give him a call and ask him to have a look in Pool's wallet. I'll be back."

"There you go," Dillon said to Miller. "Mystery piles on mystery."

"We'll wait and see," Miller told him. "What about a little shut-eye?"

"On a plane? Never." Dillon rose and picked up the empty half bottle of Krug. "I'm sure there was another half bottle in the kitchen. I'll go and see."

At Rosedene, Maggie Duncan, the matron, a no-nonsense Scot, produced Pool's ravaged and bloodstained suit in the anteroom next to the operating room where Professor George Langley was performing the postmortem on the corpse of the unfortunate chauffeur. She wore latex gloves, as did Ferguson, and gingerly emptied the pockets and laid the contents on a towel spread on a table.

A half-empty pack of cigarettes, a plastic lighter, what looked like house keys on a ring, a comb, a car key with a plastic black-and-gold tab with a telephone number on it but no name.

"Do you want to examine the wallet, General?" she asked.

"No, just take out what you find."

She did. There was cash, forty-five pounds in banknotes, a driver's license, a national insurance card, a Premier credit card, and a cheaply printed business card that she found in one of the pockets and handed over.

Ferguson examined the business card. "'Henry Pool, Private Hire, 15 Green Street, Kilburn.' " He put it down on the towel, and, as he did, she extracted another card from the wallet.

"This is interesting," she said. "'Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, we who are ourselves alone.'" Ferguson took it from her. "Is it important?" she asked.

"It certainly is, my dear." Ferguson put the card down, took out his Codex, and called Roper. "It's here," he said when the Major answered. "Also a business card: 'Henry Pool, Private Hire, 15 Green Street, Kilburn.' Check it out, and let Dillon and Miller know. And here's an interesting point that I just remembered. Pool had a slight cockney accent, but when I was following him along the pavement from the Garrick and a limousine drove past and splashed him, he got very angry and abused them. I remember what he said because his accent suddenly sounded a little Irish. He said, 'Holy Mother of God, you've soaked me, you bastards.' Then he turned to me as if embarrassed and said he was sorry-but with the cockney back again."

"Curiouser and curiouser, especially since his address is in Kilburn, the Irish quarter of our city since time immemorial. I'll see you soon." Doyle brought Roper a mug of tea as the man in the wheelchair worked his keyboard. "Making progress, Major?"

"I think so. Look at this: Henry Pool, born in London in 1946, mother Irish, Mary Kennedy. She came to England in the Second World War, worked as a cook, married a Londoner named Ernest Pool, who served in the army, was wounded in April 'forty-five, and received a medical discharge plus pension. They moved to 15 Green Street, Kilburn."

"He must have got down to work sharpish, old Ernest, for the baby to be produced in 1946."

"The bad news is, he died of a stroke two years later," Roper said. "The wound had been in the head."

"Poor sod," Tony said.

"The mother never remarried. According to her Social Security records, she continued as a cook until her late sixties. Died four years ago, aged eighty. Lung cancer."

"And Henry?"

"Worked as a driver of some sort, delivery vans, trucks, was a black-cab driver for years, then started being referred to as 'a chauffeur. ' Continued to live at the same address through all the years."

"Wife… family?"

"No evidence of a marriage."

"It sounds like a bad play, if you ask me," Tony said. "The old woman, widowed all those years, and the son-a right cozy couple, just like Norman Bates and his mum in the movie."

"Could be." Roper's fingers moved over the keys again. "So he's been in the private-hire business for twelve years. On the Ministry's approved list for the last six. Owned a first-class Amara limousine, approved by the Cabinet Office at Grade A level."

"Which explains somebody as important as the General getting him."

"And yet it just doesn't add up. How long have you been in the military police, Tony?"

"Seventeen years, you know that."

"Well, you don't need to be Sherlock Holmes… What's the most interesting thing here?"

"Yes, tell us, Sergeant." They both glanced around and found Ferguson leaning in the doorway.

"Aside from the cards, the nature of the targets," Doyle said. "Blake Johnson, Major Miller, and you, General-you've all worked together on some very rough cases in the past."

"I agree, which means, Major," Ferguson said to Roper, "we need to take a look at the various matters we've been involved in recently."

"As you say, General. I'm still intrigued by the religious element in the prayer cards, though, and the IRA element."

His fingers moved over the keys again. The borough of Kilburn appeared on the screen, drifted into an enlargement. "There we are, Green Street," Roper said. "And the nearest Roman Catholic church would appear to be Holy Name, only three streets away, the priest in charge, Monsignor James Murphy. I think we should pay him a visit. It might be rewarding."

"In what way?" said Ferguson.

"Pool would have been a parishioner at this Holy Name place. The priest might be able to tell us where he comes into it."

"All right, go talk to him, but you know what Catholic priests are like. Seal of the Confessional and all that stuff. He'll never tell you anything."

"True," Roper said, "but he might talk to a fellow Irishman."

"Dillon? Yes, as I recall, he lived in Kilburn for a while in his youth, didn't he? Have you spoken to him about what you just found out about Pool?"

"Not yet."

"Well, get on with it, for heaven's sake." Ferguson turned to Doyle. "Lead on to the kitchen, Sergeant. I need a pot of coffee, very hot and very strong."

"As you say, General."

They went out and Roper sat there thinking about it, then called Dillon, who answered at once. "Any progress to report?"